We need a strategy for this…

Been here before?

“I hear your issue and I think you are right, we need a strategy for this…” (feel free to roll your eyes at this point).

This is typically said in response to an expression of a problem – rather than a request for a strategy; and what is a strategy anyway?

 

Strategy should be a set of principles applied continuously, that support decision making to ensure alignment to your objective. It is not (or should not be) a fixed plan that implies excessive Big Design Up-Front. However I suggest our opening line isn’t referring to either of these strategies, no in this case it is much less. I will rephrase…

“I hear your point and I think you are right, I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to make a decision, because it might be wrong; but I don’t want you to think that I don’t know what to do, and I need you to remain thinking I am important.”

 

Basically the word strategy is over used and often thrown in as an opportunity to procrastinate without losing authority.

So how can we help prevent this response from being given (or even from giving it ourselves).

Firstly, take a stance that doesn’t suggest that solutions can be plucked out of thin air for a problem and then put through an expensive development process that won’t return against its own risk for months or years. Once the expectation is lifted from having to implement a solution with unknown consequences, then it is possible to retain authority whilst investigating, rather than acting.

Next understand the metrics by which the problem, and hence its resolution, can be measured. If you can’t define the metric, then you probably don’t really have your finger on the real problem.

Now suggest an idea that will affect the metric in the right direction and ask people involved what could we do to test whether the implementation of the idea will have the desired impact on the metric – a safe to fail experiment – mindful that most experiments DO fail.

Then do that test. This is a proactive decision to DO something, ACTUALLY DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING. Later assess the findings and then you can decide if the idea is worth progressing with. Now the expensive decision to invest in something is a lot less risky and the deep desire to procrastinate to avoid making a mistake is reduced.

 

Now you can call this User Research, Lean, MVP, Agile or whatever. I have avoided doing so because I don’t want to solicit an emotive response against poor implementations of these things that lead to organisations stating “We don’t do that here”. This is a call to those situations where enormous time and money is wasted with the word “Strategy” because it is an excuse to justify doing nothing hoping the problem will just evaporate!